Lips flame with pure euphoria

The Flaming Lips

“At War With the Mystics” (Warner Bros.)

* * * 1/2

THE Flaming Lips seem to enjoy their work, singing and shaking amid their balloons and bubbles and furry costumes. But the music they make is already filled with dizzy emotion and manic experimentation, while still delivering as pure, euphoric pop. Two decades after launching as a noisy punk act out of Oklahoma City, the Lips have become one of the great inventive, hilarious acts in rock, and are making some of the best, most sophisticated music of their career.

Surprises on “At War With the Mystics” (due April 4) come early and often, as leader Wayne Coyne warbles over the weird tropical doo-wop of “Yeah Yeah Yeah Song” and asks, “With all your powers, what would you do?” Then comes the Prince-like falsetto funk of “Free Radicals” and crackling electronic heat of “The Wizard Turns On ....”

The weird part is how well this stuff holds together, a delirious jumble of android psychedelia and Coyne’s elliptical wordplay that goes down as easily as warm milk (spiked with acid).

The Lips, who will be at Hollywood Bowl on July 23, sacrifice little of the sweat and bone fragments of their live show but also find a dazzling subtlety in these small studio epics, with gentle waves of oblique sound. At one point, Coyne sings, “You think you’re a radical, but you’re not so radical / In fact, you’re fanatical .... “ The music here seems like a little bit of both.

*

Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent). The albums are already released unless otherwise noted.

Steve Appleford